Saturday, June 2, 2007

The Parent Bloggers Network peeps recently turned my attention to Light Iris, a new site devoted to expectant and new moms. Light Iris launched on Mother's Day, which is all too appropriate if you ask me. The first thing you'll notice when you click over to Light Iris is that it's soooooo pretty. If you read my other blog, you've probably noticed that I have a thing for the pairing of pink and green. The design is simple, but nicely put together. While the site is up and running, there are still a few features in the works. The most interesting coming feature, in my opinion, will allow users to perform a search of only blogs. iVillage, Baby Center and Parenthood.com may have lots of information, but sometimes you're more likely to find comfort in reading someone else's account of bleeding nipples or going 19 days without baby having a poop than in a sterile article.

The crux of the matter over at Light Iris is the special search feature, which is built on Google but filters out all of the crap new moms don't have time for. For example, I recently was wondering about Sam's teeth, or lack thereof. He's fifteen months old and only has six teeth. Because of this, he is very particular about eating foods which require anything more than minimal chewing. The phrase '15 month old only has 6 teeth' searched by both Google and Light Iris yielded very different results. The Google search results gave me articles about 10 month olds with 8 teeth and 15 month olds with diarrhea for 6 days. The Light Iris search provided more relevant returns. The first and third search results provided exactly the kind of information I was looking for. The top ranked article on the Light Iris search was the seventh ranked article on Google. You get less info per page on Light Iris as well. When you're holding a screaming baby in your arms and typing with one hand while your left boob is hanging out, less can be more, especially if you're getting quality over quantity.